Good evening, 919 Gang. Our message count is low tonight,
but the quality is high.
BONNIE ROGERS
writes:
THROWBACK
THURSDAY:
When I was growing up I lived in a
virtually genderless world. From my point of view, nothing was determined
because of one's sex. Our family unit, neatly ensconced in two small adjacent
houses, consisted of my mother, my two older sisters, my grandmother and my
great aunt.
The person who knew how to do
something, worked. (My mother) The persons who needed to learn how to do
something, went to school. (My sisters and I) The persons who were home during
the day took care of the yard and the chickens. (My grandmother and great aunt)
The person who knew how to use tools, fixed things. (Mother) The person who was
there in the morning fixed breakfast. (Grandma) The person who was there in the
afternoon, cooked dinner. (Sister Lois)
This worked pretty good as long as all
the team was there. Then Lois got married and moved. Sister Pat became the
dinner cook. Grandma died and Great Aunt Maud moved away. That ended breakfast.
Then Pat graduated from high school, enrolled in college and got a job nights.
That's when my mother said, "Okay,
Bonnie. Now it's your turn to cook." She handed me a copy of the Women's Home Companion Cook Book.
I was 11.
 |
| 11-year old me and my cook book |
It
was the summer before my 7th grade at National City Junior High. I knew nothing
about cooking. Or eating, either, for that matter.
Mother was not a good cook and seldom
had ingredients worth much attention. Grandma was a plain cook, used to
producing farm fare like boiled potatoes and bacon-flour gravy, and Cream of Wheat
breakfasts.
Lois was always hungry. Her idea of the
perfect meal was macaroni and cheese, with lots of bread. Boring. Certainly not
worth my attention. Pat was always (and still is) totally disinterested in
food. She fixed the same thing every night -- fried pork chop, boiled potatoes,
canned string beans. I never ate the string beans because I had choked on a
"string" once and threw up. (At one point, under Pat's regime, I
broke out in boils. The doctor said it was from vitamin deficiency. He said I
had to add fruits and vegetable to my diet.)
So now it was my turn. I felt
challenged. As long as I had a book to guide me, what could go wrong? I started
at the beginning. The first chapter with recipes was on soup. Now, I was just
cooking for mother and me. But you don't make a bowl of soup. You make at pot
of soup.
Every week I would take my grocery
money and buy the ingredients for that week's soup. It was like chemistry. Dump
all these elements into a pot and deliciousness ensues! And I only had to cook
once a week. I made oxtail ragout. Turkey with dumplings. Chili. Vichyssoise.
Vegetable beef. Beet borscht. Cold cherry soup. Avocado whoopee soup (without
the whoopee). Meatball soup. Clam chowder. Split pea soup.
I
loved them all! Mother, not so much. "For God's sake," she said in
desperation by the end of the summer. "Go to another chapter!"
I did, of course. I really learned to
eat, as well as cook, during my junior high years. Mother had a friend who
owned a deli in Encinitas. He would drive down to take her on dates on the
weekends and always brought goodies with him. (Have you eaten chocolate-covered
ants? Pickled octopus? Honeyed locusts? Caviar? I have.) I learned that eating
could be an adventure. That there was a big world out there full of wonderful
treats.
I have distinct memories of the first
time I ate shrimp...oysters...romaine...broccoli. Discovering there was more to
the cheese world than Velveeta. The succulence of lamb. A thousand ways to eat
chicken. That Wonder wasn't the only kind of bread. That there were such
delights as T-bone steaks!
When I married at 18, I was the cook.
Not because I was a girl (that gender thing again), but because I loved it and
was good at it. I cooked for my family. I cooked for my friends. Now, that I
can't cook for myself, I have taught sous chef Bobby to conquer the kitchen.
Last night it was seafood (shrimp, scallops, squid, clams) bowties with shitaki
mushrooms and freshly grated parmesan. Tonight it's rabbit loins braised in
herbs and beer.
Yes, Mom, I went to the next chapter.
Thanks for opening up a whole world of pleasure to me I would never have known
if it hadn't been my "turn" to do dinner.
--------------------------------------------------------------
CHUCK BOYD
writes:
When I first came back to Charleston, I rented a small
house on one of the barrier islands, not far from the beach.
Each spring, for the four years I was there, my landlord
would release two or three goats into a fenced storage area and shed next to my
rented 800-sf brick home at the end of a winding dirt road. Within a month, all
the grass would be chewed down.
Then he'd move them to a much larger fenced area up near
the main road, with the same "mowed" results.
The downside, of course, was that goats will climb anything
to get up higher and many mornings I awoke to the sound of hooves prancing on
the metal shed.
I can see why someone would "leap from their bed to
see what's the matter" (on Christmas Eve).
This gentle man invited me to join him and his wife at a
tent revival, and I went. He was prominent in the church group so we were
seated on white folding chairs in front row center. I got a close-up look at
the purpose of a "spit jar" for a preacher in an outdoor setting.
If a bug entered his mouth mid-sentence, he would grab the
glass, take a swig and spit out the offending critter. Or, cast it forth.
These grass-eating goats, along with some sheep, would be
part of a living display each Easter at the church's outdoor "Road To
Resurrection". The faithful would drive by the three crosses and celebrate
"He Is Risen" in a bucolic setting, complete with grass-munching
livestock.
One year, in preparation, he rounded up his
"herd" in the large fenced field by my house, and a large roving pack
of dogs attacked the animals and, in a frenzy, killed or seriously injured all
of them.
That year, fellow church members helped him dig deep holes
and bury the slaughtered goats and sheep and the annual church event was canceled.
----------------------------------------------------------
DAVID FARMER writes:
I
check with CNBC online several times a day to see how the economy is doing, and
whether we're engaged in a nuclear war. The site will often illustrate its
stories with offbeat pictures. For example, if the article is about a split
between two types of investors, CNBC may show a stretch of highway with a big
crack down the middle, as if from an earthquake.
But
I think the business site outdid itself this time. For a story about
plague-bearing fleas in Arizona, it used this picture:
That may look like a large bird wearing goggles and a hat.
But it's actually a doctor wearing goggles and a man-made beak, probably shaped
from wood. During the Black Death, doctors didn't usually have the option of
fleeing (no joke intended) to a safer location. Their ethics compelled them to
stay and treat the sick.
But
the docs took every precaution they could think of. One was a beak filled with
flowers and herbs, fastened to the medico's face. They hoped that breathing
through this vegetation would avoid contagion. At the least it would minimize
the odor of decomposing bodies. The goggles were there in case the disease
could enter through the eyes.
But
as we now know, only the air-freshener aim could be achieved. The Plague was
spread by disease-carrying fleas, riding on the rats that were omnipresent in
Middle Ages towns. The only real solution was to eliminate the rats, and thus
their passengers.
The
legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin was a rat-catcher who supposedly tempted
rodents out of town with the sound of his pipe:
He came to Hamelin to rid the place of rats. But the
townspeople reneged on their promise to pay him. So he piped their children
away, and they were never seen again:
The legend is supposed to be based on a true story. To
which I say: rats!
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
